Current Activities

Radio for Peace Building in Northern Mali

The Radio for Peace Building in Northern Mali program represents the continuation of USAID’s investment to support radio technology program in the Northern part of Mali. The radio program will continue some of the successful aspects of the Last Mile Initiative and create new FM community radio stations within the Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal regions of northern Mali.

The key program activities to establish 11 new FM radio stations in northern Mali are:

Site Prospecting and Community Mobilization
Radio Station Installation
Technical Training of Radio Staff
Radio Program Content Generation Training
Ensuring Sustainability through Income Generation activities
Integrate Gender Considerations
Enhancing the Radio Stations’ Sustainability through Cybertigi Service Offerings

The Cybertigi 2.0

The Cybertigi is a computer center developed by IESC/Geekcorps that can be set up in remote areas. It is a low-energy solution to bring computing and ICT to rural areas that lack electricity. The essence of the Cybertigi is an efficient low-power computer that runs on a single solar panel: The Desert PC. The new Cybertigi center is going to run under the latest version of Xubuntu, the most user-friendly Linux based operating system.

In a Cybertigi center you can:

Use OpenOffice which is an open source word processor and spreadsheet
Consult Moulin, our offline Wikipedia (http://moulinwiki.org)
Photocopy documents
Take digital pictures with a rugged digital camera and print them out
Watch movies and listen to music
Access the Internet if there’s a GPRS connection provided in the locality

IESC/Geekcorps currently has five operating Cybertigi centers in Narena, Faraba, Niagadina, Ouelessebougou and Kolokani. IESC/Geekcorps also opened up five Cybertigi centers located at the five radio stations of the former “ Community Mobilization through Radio Technology Program ” Project around Gao and Kidal. The Cybertigi center in Kolokani was installed in partnership with a Peace Corps volunteer who will be overseeing the management of the center and will work with Kolokani inhabitants to introduce and train them to use the computer (word processing, the offline Wikipedia, photocopying using the scanner, etc.).

New Cybertigi centers will soon be available in the 11 new radio stations of the RPNP program in the Timbuktu, Gao & Kidal regions.